end of match autonomous mode

[d.courtney]

I for the most part like the idea. In regards to everyone saying this would be boring/anticlimatic at the end, why would everyone be forced into this end autonomous? Instead towards the end of the game you have a challenge available to only those in autonomous, while the other teams are free to continue with the bulk part of the game. To activate autonomous, teams press a button similar to that of the kill switch. That team then has 5 or some other number of seconds to get out of the drivers area. via light seqences or maybe even a special light the audiance, refs, and other drivers can tell which teams are running in autonomous. I think seeing this would perhaps (with the right game) make for some of the most exciting endings.

[rhoads2234]

It would be so hard to program - either driving training to place yourself on the field or an awesome vision/sensing array
it would, as others said, make the good teams shine but many teams might not even try because of the challenge

you would also have to be very cautious of other 'bots on the field because use could seriously mess up calcutions of speed, distance or direction if something is on the field

[bear24rw]

If they had an end game autonomous mode for rack and roll where you could score a tube, we would barely need to change our autonomous mode, all we would add is just spin the robot around until you see the light, then run the autonomous mode we already had lol I would love to see endgame autonomous mode

[amateurrobotguy]

It is already extremely difficult for even moderately experienced teams to get even a beginning autonoumous with defineable positions. It is a good conceptual idea, but way to hard to implement into the progging.

[Richard McClellan]

This would definitely be a "good challenge", but I really hope it doesn't happen for at least a few more years. We need to see more teams capable of completing the autonomous before the match starts first. Like others have said, it could definitely be catastrophic. Think about the robots that could be tipped over at the end of the match - if these robots attempted to open up an arm or something while in this state, it could be very very bad.

While a "good challenge," this is an idea I really hope FIRST doesn't use...

[Josh Goodman]

This would be intense and fun if all of the robots had a honed auto mode. I've seen robots go out of control just in the beginning autonomous mode. I think for most teams it should be fine but not only is it not fair to those teams who don't have very advanced programmers, It isn't safe.

Just leave it at the beginning, it was a challenge there too.

[Chief Samwize]

Originally Posted by Josh Murphy

I think this would be a great idea. It would truly add to the challenge of the game. In my opinion I think this would make things more interesting, There would be no official starting box or spot so it would make the programming more challenging and the match outcome may become more exciting.

Yeah sure Josh lets just mess with the programmer...

I don't think it is that bad of an idea. It would add many new elements to the game as well and pose some interesting challanges for programmers. The only problem I would see with doing this is a team not where they need to be at the end of the operator control to start autonomous and something going horribly wrong from there. Otherwise I think it would be kind of cool.

-Sam

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Heh, yeah, like we aren't going to do that anyway...

And, yes, we have noticed that this has been suggested for at least the past two years in the "So you design the game" threads. And thought of by some others for several years before that.

-dave

So... Dave posts in a thread about the game and no one tries to finagle some abstract meaning out of it? What is the world coming to?!*

*Some semblence of sanity perhaps?


On a more serious note, I don't think "optional" autonomous is very plausible for two reasons. One, is it creates more work for the field (and more things to go wrong). Additionally, if my robot is operating in autonomous, and it's got human drivers blocking me, I'm not going to score. They'll get in the way every time.

Amateurrobotguy, you talk about how its hard enough for teams with predefined positions. Here they get to pick their position. For example, consider Aim High (2006). Let's say that autonomous is at the end of the match, and balls scored during this period are worth 2x what they were during the teleoperated period. So, now you can drive your robot right up to the goal, line up, and then the only thing the robot has to accomplish autonomously is shoot them. That's surely easier, isn't it? Plus those teams who are good at autonomous can show off their skills (and gain a relative time advantage during the match), by being able to be in a larger area, and less precisely lined up when autonomous starts. This gives them an additional gameplay bonus (you can continue to play after your opponents have gone to line up for the autonomous portion of play). Also, in the world of strategy, it makes choices that much harder. Do you continue to block Team X, in hopes of preventing them from scoring, or do you go line up for your autonomous, in hopes of outscoring them? Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Also, I didn't mean to imply that autonomous at the end of the match was my idea, as I'm positive I read about the idea on CD and became a convert.

[Bongle]

For the people saying "we need to wait a few years for teams to get caught up with autonomous modes", I don't think that'll ever happen. By the very nature of a high school competition, in any given year, a certain substantial percentage of FRC teams will be in a building/rebuilding/starting/learning phase that will prevent them from being able to perform solidly autonomously. If you wait for that churn to finally end and for most teams to be able to do a competitive autonomous mode, you're going to be waiting forever.

Also, perhaps Rack 'n Roll left a poor impression on people's confidence in many teams' autonomous abilities: when the reward is quite low (2005, 2007) and the difficulty is extremely high (2005, 2007), you're going to have boring autonomous periods. In games like Aim High, even if you couldn't get balls in the goal, you could still prevent others from doing so with small amounts of effort. In Stack Attack, you could conceivably knock over your opponent's pre-built stacks if you couldn't navigate to the central stack.


Anyway, I'd LOVE an end-of-game autonomous (EOGA) in 2009 (when I'll be able to mentor), and here are my responses to common arguments:
It's too hard for most teams - If the challenge is simply "starting from outside <location>, get to <location>", then driver training and a dead-reckoning mode would be sufficient, and that can be done by any team. More sophistication could allow for experienced teams to navigate to <location> from farther away via camera.
It's dangerous for the robot - That's what the driver's E-Stop is for.
It's dangerous for humans - That's what the ref's E-Stop (they have one, right?) is for.
The robot might be damaged - If you know of the damage beforehand, hit the E-Stop during the pause that I presume would occur before EOGA. If you do not know beforehand, then I don't see how 15 seconds of autonomous would be more damaging to your robot than 15 seconds of human-operated play. In both cases, as soon as you see the robot damaging itself, you stop it from doing so (either via E-Stop or just stopping what you're doing).
Other robots might get in the way - That currently happens in the current autonomous anyway. In 2003, 2004, 2006, and to some extent 2007, autonomous modes could result in full-throttle collisions.